This three year contract (with the possibility to extend for an extra two years) will enable Eastdawn to distribute 50-cm resolution products from the Pléiades constellation, as well as innovative services. These products will support near-real-time applications to five key accounts in China (Ministry of Land Resources; National Administration for Surveying, Mapping & Geoinformation; China Geological Survey; Ministry of Agriculture; and Ministry of Housing & Urban-rural Development) on an exclusive basis.

This new partnership agreement demonstrates Eastdawn’s commitment to Pléiades. The company, investing in reception infrastructure, will operate three receiving stations to meet the needs of clients over the vast Chinese territory.

“China has leveraged the benefits of very high resolution satellite data since the beginning of the century to conduct land resource surveys and urban planning. Eastdawn will build on this tradition and work closely with our domestic remote sensing community,” declared Mr. Bing Sun, President and CEO of Eastdawn, “Pléiades will be the right solution to meet the needs of our target market. We believe our partnering with Astrium Services will help provide the Chinese government and key businesses with quality geospatial information in a timely and convenient manner to address applications such as land resource surveys, mapping, geosciences, agricultural assessment and urban planning."

The upcoming constellation is based on four satellites: Pléiades 1 and Pléiades 2, two very-high-resolution satellites delivering 50-cm ortho colour products as a standard, and SPOT 6 and 7, designed to extend SPOT 5’s success to the 1.5-m product family. Phased on the same orbit, the constellation will enjoy unprecedented reactivity, with intra-day revisit capacity anywhere on the Earth. Multiple tasking plans per day result in an unrivalled optimization of data collection: unforeseen weather changes, as well as last-minute requests, can be taken into account for a first-class level of service.
With four new optical imaging satellites to launch over the next three years, Astrium Services, through its extensive geo-information range of offering, is gearing up to bring its customers the best that space technology has to offer, ensuring continuity of service up to 2023.

About Astrium
Astrium is the number one company in Europe for space technologies and a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, dedicated to providing civil and defence space systems and services.
In 2010, Astrium had a turnover of €5 billion and more than 15,000 employees worldwide, mainly in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Its three main areas of activity are Astrium Space Transportation for launchers and orbital infrastructure, Astrium Satellites for spacecraft and ground segment, and Astrium Services for comprehensive end-to-end solutions covering secure and commercial satcoms and networks, high security satellite communications equipment, bespoke geo-information and navigation services worldwide.

EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2010, the Group – comprising Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter – generated revenues of € 45.8 billion and employed a workforce of nearly 122,000.

About Eastdawn
Beijing Eastdawn Information Technology Co., Ltd. is a leading geospatial information provider in China. Founded in 2001, Eastdawn is headquartered in Beijing, China and is certified as a Class-A surveying and mapping company in China. Eastdawn provides spatial data services and solutions to governmental and commercial clients around the world. Eastdawn’s business includes remote sensing and photogrammetric data capture, data processing and geospatial information applications. For more information, please visit www.eastdawn.com.cn